Time looks up for Barnett government in WA

Labor's Mark McGowan will be elected Western Australia's premier on Saturday if the polls are right.

But the prize will be arguably the nation's worst performing economy, inarguably its highest unemployment rate, plus a record debt and deficit.

Colin Barnett has led the most stable government in the nation since 2008 but there appears to be a mood in WA for change, with many locals having had enough of him.

West Australians became rich on the back of the mining boom as property prices soared to levels behind only Sydney and the price of a coffee was the most expensive in the nation.

Much of the money is gone but you wouldn't have known it, as it was thrown around like confetti during the election campaign, with Labor's $5 billion worth of promises making it the biggest spender.

But a vote for Labor is arguably looking a more stable option.

Already strained relations between government partners - the Liberals and the Nationals - approached rock bottom this week, when Treasurer Mike Nahan said the government would gut the Royalties for Regions program by $800 million to help repair the budget.

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The multi-billion dollar scheme's architect Nationals leader Brendon Grylls angrily responded that it was a final betrayal by the Liberals and he would "die in a ditch" to save Royalties for Regions.

There was already significant bad blood over the Liberals preference deal that placed Pauline Hanson's One Nation above the Nationals in the upper house, while Grylls' proposal to slap a new mining tax on BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto is opposed by the Libs.

Barnett said the relationship was not damaged beyond repair and "Brendon and I get on fine, we always have".

But the Liberals would almost certainly need the Nationals to push through their agenda to cut debt and the deficit, which includes Royalties for Regions and an $11 billion privatisation of poles and wires utility Western Power.

"I don't know how they are going to pay for those promises. I imagine realistically a lot of those promises will be deferred. Some of them may even be broken," Notre Dame University political analyst Peter Kennedy said of Labor and the Liberals.

The Liberals' promises, estimated at $2.6 billion by Treasury, are heavily contingent on $3 billion in net proceeds from the planned Western Power's sale.

Labor's $5 billion in promises, led by its near $3 billion commitment to build its greatly expanded Metronet rail service, is itself contingent on questionable federal funds of up to $1.2 billion earmarked for the Liberal-backed Perth Freight Link project that the PM Malcolm Turnbull says they can't have.

"It has been an unsatisfactory campaign; both sides have come up with plenty of promises without a convincing argument about how they will pay for it," Mr Kennedy said.

Barnett and Nahan have appeared often frustrated and irritated on the hustings at the fact that their Labor counterparts attack their economic record while promising the world.

But the record deficit of more than $3 billion and debt forecast to hit nearly $41 billion happened under their watch, even if they say it is almost solely due to WA being ripped off on the GST share.

Curtin University political analyst John Phillimore says apart from backing big projects, state governments are more service deliverers than drivers of the economy, making it more difficult to diversify away from mining, despite both leaders promising to do so.

The One Nation preference deal makes mathematical sense but it has made it harder for the Liberals to get their message out, University of Notre Dame politics analyst Martin Drum said.

McGowan led the polls at the start of the election campaign and still did at the end, with the opposition ahead 54-46 on two party preferred terms in a Galaxy poll released this week.

If correct, it points to an 11 per cent swing and Labor wins comfortably.

"A 10 per cent uniform swing is unprecedented but there seems to be a feeling that there will be swings of at least that size and perhaps more in some of those outer seats," Kennedy said, referring to the Perth battleground mortgage belt seats that will decide the election.

Mr Barnett made what felt like a final stand on Thursday in front of the new Perth Stadium - which was dreamt up during the boom - saying he had the "passion and the true love of this state" his opponent did not.

Mr McGowan says WA has given him everything including his wife and children and the state needs a "fresh start".